Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The right's role in the Arizona massacre

(Ed. note: I first came across Dan last November when I was doing a brief stint at Crooks and Liars, and I instantly became a fan of his thoughtful analyses of complex issues. Here is his take on the Arizona shooting, specifically a response to the stupidity of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds. It's his first guest post for us, and we hope to have more from him in future. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out his excellent blog. -- MJWS)

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Glenn Reynolds is a dumbass and those who find his arguments persuasive are, if possible, even more stupid:

[I]f you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of
Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a)
asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which
based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b)
you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to
score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

When, a few months ago, there was a spate of
widely-publicized suicides of bullied teens, we had, briefly, a national
conversation about the dangers of bullying. But in the wake of an
ideologically-motivated assassination attempt of a sitting member of
Congress, we aren’t having a national conversation about the dangers of
violent rhetoric -- because the conversation about bullying children was
started by adults, and there are seemingly no responsible grown-ups to
be found among conservatives anymore.

The reason the right wing is partially responsible is because it has embraced eliminationism. It has created a culture of political violence.
This extremist rhetoric is almost exclusively the province of the
right. There are virtually no examples of -- please pay attention to the
following words -- prominent commentators and high ranking elected officials on the left doing the same. Both sides don't do it; only the right validates and exhorts its violent lunatics. Athenae:

The point that needs to be made clear as possible, loud as
possible, often as possible, is that this is about people in POWER
calling for violence. There have always been fringe goofballs making
noise on everything from fluoride in the water to aliens in the
cornfields.

The difference now is that you have members of
Congress feeding these freakjobs, and a former vice presidential
candidate cheering them on, and a whole news network dedicated to
freaking them out and telling them where to aim their weapons.

What Reynolds fails to realize is that human psychology is complex.
So are societies. As wonderful as it would be to have an unambiguous,
direct, 1-to-1, "here is my last diary entry Sarah put her in the
crosshairs so off I go on a shooting spree" piece of evidence to tie it
all together in a neat package, life is rarely so cooperative.

Thoughtful people tend instead to look at things like patterns and
environments. The law does this, too: Incitement to riot is not a crime
because lawmakers thought there was a straight line between violent
rhetoric and violent action, but because when you saturate the air with
hate you cannot control who breathes it in. It goes out to the sane and
the crazy, and those on the edge as well. You don't know how it
reaches people, how it bounces around, how it can settle into an
unsettled mind and incubate. All we know is this: The more violent
rhetoric you put out there, the more you get back.

The fact that we will never have the kind of smoking gun evidence
that unmistakably ties a specific belching of hate with a specific crime
does not make suggestions of a connection a vicious lie, nor is the
examining of the toxic bile spewed forth by the right an attempt to
score an unrelated political point.

Advertisers spend billions of dollars trying to reach consumers, but in the words of retailer John Wanamaker, "I know that 50 percent of my advertising is
wasted. I just don't know which 50 percent." It probably never happens
that someone sees a Pepsi ad and thinks, I think I'll grab a cool,
refreshing Pepsi right now. What we do know is, increased spending on
Pepsi advertising will lead to increased sales of Pepsi.

The more you get the message out, the more you influence behavior.
It is not controversial with advertising. Hell, it is not controversial
with religion -- why bother proselytizing otherwise? It is not
controversial in any area of human endeavor. Get the message out,
influence behavior. Get the message out, influence behavior. Only
inside of Reynolds' teeny tiny little brain does the widespread, top-down, continual delivery of a message have no impact whatsoever.

Sorry, I'm calling bullshit. Elected representatives, right-wing patrons, and the most famous conservative voices have taken great pains to
continually bombard the base with extremism. They poke and poke with
their sharp sticks with full knowledge that they will get a reaction.
Like the unknown 50% of advertising that is wasted, they cannot be sure
which messages will catch fire and which will fizzle out. Neither can
they know which ones will inspire a more aggressive response, though I'm
willing to generously grant that in their heart of hearts they would
prefer to see the mere threat of violence (e.g., packing heat at campaign
rallies) than the actual commission of it.

But that does not excuse them, and it certainly does not exempt them
from scrutiny when it literally blows up and the blood starts flowing. I
can understand Reynolds' reluctance to be associated with, or see his
allies implicated in, the massacre in Arizona. But only someone with a
truly below average intellect or a deep psychological investment in
remaining blind can fail to see it: the right wing is partially
responsible for this. They created this culture of political violence.
They cannot be denied their portion.